Stapleford, An Introduction To The Village And Church, written by J.P.A., 11 May 1973:
Stapleford country lies southward between Stonehenge and the Iron Age fort of Yarnbury. An ancient track way leads from the village direct to each of them. There are seven other Staplefords in England, for Stapleford is the name given by the Saxons to the common feature of a ford marked by a post or staple, at first probably of wood, then of stone. In Wiltshire it became the name for the strategic point where the road from Old Sarum to Bath crosses a winterbourne, which here never runs dry, just above the entry into the river Wylye. That road was an important line of communication, still marked on the map as the Herepath, that is the road on which the Saxon army marched, such as Alfred’s out to defeat the Danes, and possibly the Imperial legionaries as well, for on Stapleford Down in the corner of the earthwork known as the South Kite is believed to be a Roman camp.
The village in the valley has four parts. A mile north of the ford lies Uppington, always small and now represented by two houses. In between is the hamlet known from its chief building as Church Street. On the right bank of the stream is the settlement opposite or Overstreet, clustered beside a castle mound, unexcavated but probably of the twelfth century; and lastly, Serrington, or the farm by the water, better known, from its relative position, as Southington, which boasts the inn, naturally alongside the ford, and in former times also the mill. For more than three hundred and fifty years now the ford has been replaced by a bridge.
Although the village was included in Domesday Book, the earliest mention of the church is some fifty years later, in an undated charter of Henry I, belonging to the closing years of his reign, say 1131-35. The church is said to have been added to the endowments of the cathedral at Old Sarum by Bishop Roger of that time but the ownership seems to have been in dispute. In 1220 the name of an incumbent is first mentioned and six years later the link with the cathedral, itself being abandoned, no longer appears. The story told by the building complements this documentary evidence. The doorway, with the simple bowl of the font immediately inside, belongs to the late twelfth century, as do the four arches of the nave resting on a series of massive drum columns, decorated by alternating bands of Chilmark stone and green sandstone from Hurdcott, the same combination as the pavement laid c.1120 in the cathedral at Old Sarum. This was also the time of a greatly increased devotion to the Virgin Mary, to whom the church is likewise dedicated. In 1239 was authorised a four day village fair at the annual remembrance of her birthday (8 September).
But the overall impression, as frequently in a mediaeval church, is of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, though the tracery of the east window is by Ewan Christian (1869). There would have been room to stand for all of the adults of the population, which is estimated for 1377 at 214, very close to the twentieth century figures. The stone seating in the sanctuary implies that the incumbent or his curate had been joined by chantry chaplains, if there were regularly to be three of the clergy at Sunday services. The side-chapel to the right constitutes such a chantry but the grave slab in the wall alcove is unfortunately unidentified. The place of burial of a Hussey or Esturmy one would expect. There are traces of red ochre on the sedilia and in scroll-work patterns under the nave arches. The carved heads of the sedilia, with one exception, look pre-Raphaelite but there are good original examples elsewhere, notably at the entrance to the tower from the church and on the pillar by the font (to exorcise demons?). Also by the font are samples of old floor tiles similar to some made at Clarendon. The only surviving ancient glass is a floral quarry in the tracery of a chancel window.
In 1444 the manor gave the church to the Trinitarian priory of Easton on the edge of Savernake forest, near to which the family resided, and the living of Stapleford became a permanent vicarage. As the sixteenth century dawned, the church was enriched by three additions – a clerestory to lighten the nave; a north chapel, where a nice roof corbel of a bishop’s head reminds the visitor of St. Osmund, then newly canonized; and a porch, over which the heated room, now dismantled, must have been useful for travelling brethren to stay overnight, and may also have served as a school, to judge by the games rudely carved on the stone seat downstairs.
At the dissolution of the monasteries Easton and its properties were transferred to the ownership of Sir Edward Seymour, a county magnate of Esturmy blood whose sister a week before had become Queen of England. His descendants owned two of the Stapleford farms for exactly four hundred years until sold by Miss Jane Seymour in 1936. The Seymour crest is displayed in early nineteenth century glass in the great south window. The church, however, did not remain with the Seymours but in 1547 was surrendered back to the Crown, as one of Edward VI’s first acts, to help endow his father’s own chantry at Windsor (until 1836 in Salisbury diocese) where Henry VIII had been buried beside the best-loved of his six queens. The College of St. George, specifically exempted from the provisions of the Chantries Act, commemorate Henry among its benefactors by name every quarter and daily in the Garter prayers, while the Dean and Canons of Windsor continue to be patrons of Stapleford church.
A few later ornaments and furnishings deserve notice. The parish communion cup, with paten to match, is unhallmarked but inscribed 1678. The rather primitive craftsmanship could indicate that they were locally made, possibly by a Salisbury silversmith. Two seventeenth century coffin stools are marked IC, perhaps standing for John or Joseph Collins as donor. The altar of that time is now in the vestry. The small tower window by Clayton and Bell of the Annunciation to the Shepherds (1862) looks forward to a deepened religious life among Stapleford’s pastoral congregation following the restoring of the building by the architect William Slater. The Good Shepherd light in the chancel enshrines an interesting though unhappy memory – Winston Churchill’s headmaster (d.1886) at St. James’ School, Ascot.
Leaving the porch (with scratch dial on jamb – until quite modern times the only way of checking the accuracy of a watch was by comparison with the sun) walk towards the south-east corner of the churchyard until you can see on the tower the tablet dated 1674 on the uppermost stage, which was rebuilt then. The slope of the nave roof has been steepened at some time and made the tablet more difficult to see. The tower houses five seventeenth century bells, three (all since recast) including the tenor of 10 cwt., by John Wallis of Salisbury, who at the same time cast the curfew ring at Windsor, and two Commonwealth bells by Nathaniel Bolter, an itinerant founder from Buckinghamshire. The south side of the churchyard is mostly the site of the vicarage house and garden until 1858 when the present house, enlarged 1884, was built, also by Slater, further up the hill on glebe land.
At the east are two headstones to John Saph and his wife Alice who remained loyal to the old faith and were fined for persistent absence from service at their parish church in Charles II’s reign. The public prayer for the peace of their souls, then unusual, now echoes a modern tablet inside the church. The east wall of the church contains a small quatrefoil window apparently indicating that once the chancel had a wooden or plaster ceiling. Underneath is a much weathered crucifixion panel said to be part of the churchyard cross. Below the main window, incongruously, is what seems to be an old church safe or aumbry cupboard, without a door, removed from the sanctuary inside.
The north side reveals the full view of the tower, placed to avoid the falling ground at the west end. It lacks only the wind vanes which have snapped off. The tower is built entirely of stone for strength and in a few places are signs where the scaffolding was positioned. Broadly speaking, it is true of the whole building that the more flint has been mixed with the stonework the heavier the restoration. The flat buttress at the west end of the nave is marked with a consecration cross and so dates from when the church was new. The stone coffin in the porch is of a type of which at least one other still remains in the ground.
Sometimes a quite unremarkable gravestone has a distinguished association. Charles Rowden (d.1881), buried between the path and the belfry door, was a clockmaker whose timepieces preserve his memory to generations that never knew him. By the western boundary lies the body of Henry Bennett, churchwarden and farmer. It has been estimated that at least three-quarters of modern garden roses have been developed from Bennett’s hybridising experiments, introduced to the public from Stapleford in 1879 and the years following. (The white cluster roses on his daughter’s grave at his side are not among them). If ever the life of a village seems narrow it is worth remembering that a shepherd’s son here was a member of the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-4. He is not buried in Stapleford but he could hardly have taken the name of Stapleford to a more distant part of the earth.
Two essential Englishmen have caught the inspiration of the scene. Alfred Munnings, painting at Druid’s Lodge, was ecstatic, quoting from the Elegy in a Country Churchyard. The racing stable shut down in 1959, and the gallops and paddocks with other fields are at present largely given over to a trial ground for new varieties of cereals. But some things are imperishable and Stapleford likes to think they found their way into Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony that had its first stirrings here. In the score is a quotation “Upon this place stood a cross and, a little below, a sepulchre. Then he said, He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death.†And in the music of the last movement the Alleluia cadences of the resurrection seem to blend with the watercolour landscapes of Wiltshire.
Saint Mary’s Church, Stapleford, illustrated by G.U.S. Corbett.
